Talking About "Writing About Architecture": A Conversation With Alexandra Lange

As Placemaking Blog readers already know, we’re in the midst of launching a public conversation about the need for an Architecture of Place. In researching the current state of architectural criticism, we came across design critic Alexandra Lange’s brand new book,Writing About Architecture, which serendipitously provides an in-depth look at how to write effectively about the very subject we were arguing needs to be written more effectively about!

Lange, who teaches criticism at New York University and the School of Visual Arts, has created a hybrid that is part anthology, part handbook. Writing About Architecture presents six essays by well-known critics, including Lewis Mumford, Michael Sorkin, and Jane Jacobs, using them to illustrate various aspects of successful and effective criticism. I recently had the opportunity to chat with the author via email about activist criticism, improving communication between citizens and designers, and how the democratization of media is opening up this field to new voices.

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Brendan Crain: You devote a good deal of ink in Writing About Architecture to activist criticism, focusing (necessarily) on specific examples. Thinking more broadly, what would you say is the state of activist criticism today? Can you think of people who are doing a particularly good job with this kind of writing? And if there are any, what are some of the broader goals of contemporary activist design criticism?

Alexandra Lange: In the last chapter of my book I discuss Jane Jacobs, and how she might have reacted to the Atlantic Yards project. I think it needed a Jane Jacobs to stop it — an advocate as eloquent about the costs, and the alternatives, as those seductive Gehry renderings — and for whatever reason, one did not appear. But the activist spirit was by no means dead. It just got diffused into activist non-profits and activist blogs and activist essays. The diffused media landscape made it easier to follow the saga week by week, but perhaps made it harder for any one person to become the voice.

Activist criticism now is less likely to be on the pages of a major media outlet and more likely to be on a purpose-built blog. Jane Jacobs and Michael Sorkin had the Village Voice; today, I think of Aaron Naparstek and Streetsblog, which he founded but has now become a larger, multi-writer entity. He built his own platform for what the New York Times would not cover. That’s incredibly exciting but also potentially limiting — what if you have activist thoughts about other topics? Preservation is another area where I think critics can be effective, but I wouldn’t want to write about modernist preservation all the time.

In terms of broader goals, I can think of three areas that seem to attract activism: public space (like PPS), preservation (like DOCOMOMO, Landmarks West!) and transportation (Transportation Alternatives, Streetsblog). But more people get their news about the city from places like Curbed and other real estate blogs, and I am still always hoping that those sites will get more critical, and put their readership to use. It isn’t really in their personality profile, but I’m an optimist.

BC: That raises the question of why, at a time when architecture is purportedly paying more attention to social issues, the audience for writing about it seems to be shrinking, with the “death of architecture criticism” meme making the blog-rounds over the past few months. Groups that are particularly well-organized online–bicycling advocates, urban gardeners, transportation wonks, and even real estate gawkers–seem to dominate the conversation about cities. Discussions about architecture seem much more insular. How might the conversation about the built environment be opened up to appeal to a wider audience?

AL: I’m not sure I think the “death of architecture criticism” meme is real. I am sad when publications that have longstanding critic positions decide they don’t need them anymore, but I wonder if the real story isn’t architecture criticism exploring the new media landscape. TV criticism went through a tremendous transition, embracing the recap, rejecting the recap, making a case for itself as the central cultural critique of our day. It could be amazing if architecture criticism made a similar transition and came out stronger.

For that to happen, I think criticism needs to take more forms: not just appear in the culture section, but in news and opinion; appear on Twitter, in conversations with other fields; point out how it is central to questions of development, and environmentalism, and even television, that people are already engaged with. Readers need to recognize that it doesn’t have a single personality. Unfortunately, the first people critics need to convince are the editors, and I know from experience that can be tough.

BC: In addition to diversifying the ways in which critical writing is being disseminated, does the scope of what what’s being written about need to widen? In the book, you’ve included “You Have to Pay for the Public Life,” an essay by Charles Moore that contrasts architectural with social monumentality. You note that, by Moore’s definition, a place as simple and unadorned as a meadow can be considered monument if that meadow resonates with the surrounding communities — “people make monuments.” Do you think writing about more ordinary elements of the city could be helpful in broadening the audience for criticism?

AL: Moore’s essay is one of my all time favorites, and I constantly refer to it in my thinking about public space and the way we make cities. ‘Who is paying’ and ‘How are we paying’ are questions relevant to almost any public space. In that chapter I even review, in a sense, the Urban Meadow in my Brooklyn neighborhood as a monument. So yes, I do think critics need to widen their scope, but I also think people need to notice that they’ve already done that, and have been doing it. Justin Davidson has a piece in this week’s New York magazine about Times Square, and he’s written about it at least one other time. Michael Kimmelman is making the architects mad by writing about planning and not architecture for the Times. Karrie Jacobs has been doing this all along. There was a tendency to starchitecture criticism, but it wasn’t forever and it wasn’t everyone.

BC: Due to the technological changes that you spoke of earlier, it’s easy now for anyone with an interest in architecture and design to participate in the public discussion about these topics. Blogging and tweeting are to media, in a way, what “Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper” interventions are to design. In the book, you refer to Jane Jacobs’ Death and Life of Great American Cities as “a primary document for a ground-up, deinstitutionalized form of architectural criticism.” Are there other books, essays, blogs, etc. that you think are particularly instructive for people who, like Jacobs, aren’t trained as designers or architects, but who want to write about how design affects their communities?

AL: I like the approach Alissa Walker takes on her own blog, Gelatobaby, as well in her freelance work (she now has a column at LA Weekly). I like the kind of events the Design Trust for Public Space organizes, creating social interactions in unusual parts of the city. I think Kevin Lynch’s Image of the City is well worth reading, even though it is dated, because his mental mapping project, and the five elements of the city he identifies (path, edge, district, node, landmark), remain useful in trying to figure out what’s missing. If you want to read more Lewis Mumford, I recommend the collection From the Ground Up, which has a lot about cars, housing and streets. I just read an essay on architecture and urban development in Kazakhstan by Andrew Kovacs, soon to be published in PIDGIN, that I found fascinating. Sometimes just reading an account of what it is like to walk around in a strange place is enough, and that’s a great place for the non-designer to start. Get out the AIA Guide and go explore.

BC: Getting out and observing how a place works is something we highly recommend! But sometimes people can sense things intuitively about a place that they may not be able to articulate in a way that design professionals respond to. We conducted one of our How to Turn a Place Around training workshops at the PPS offices in New York last week, and one of the attendees said that she was participating because she would like “for designers to think more like citizens, and for citizens to think more like designers.” You’ve included a bunch of great exercises in Writing About Architecture to help readers put lessons learned from the various essays into action. Can you think of one or two exercises that could help citizens to communicate their concerns more effectively to designers–and vice versa?

AL: I think for the non-designer, getting specific is really helpful. Achieving a higher level of noticing. Do you always trip on that step? Why do you take the stairs rather than the ramp? Is it just too hot in the park? Think about the height, the materials, the lighting level, the plants and try to figure out what it is that isn’t working. No one likes to hear, “I just don’t like it…” and I think making the problem as concrete as you can helps designers to hear you. Also, if you are in a place that isn’t working, try to think of a similar one that you do like. What does that one have that this one doesn’t? Compare and contrast is really effective.

As for the designers, I’m with the anti-archispeak contingent. Architects have to get specific too, and not talk about landscape elements rather than plants, etc. It is a kind of shorthand, but it is off-putting. More important, though, is to discuss the narrative of a project: why you chose this material rather than that, how it is supposed to make citizens (not users!) feel and act, what’s the point. Everyone wants places that work, but there are so many different ways to get there.

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http://twitter.com/AYReport Norman Oder

I question whether a Jane Jacobs was possible for Atlantic Yards. She would have needed a big media megaphone, and they were not available. Atlantic Yards was not merely a question of architecture and design–it was “jobs, housing, and hoops.”
One thing needed was honest and thoughtful architecture criticism (which Ms. Lange focuses on in her book). Had Michael Kimmelman been writing instead of Muschamp and Ouroussoff, there might have been a greater effort to modify the plan, but the arena was non-negotiable.And all the NY dailies supported the project. They did virtually no investigative reporting. The political heavyweights were lined up from the start. The single toughest mainstream coverage was Chris Smith’s August 2006 NY mag cover story, but it had no impact on a project already on the train to approval.

The Times published one op-ed about the project–the tone was “pox on both houses*–before the project was approved in 2006. That was in the City section. The first op-ed in the paper at large appeared *after* the project had passed.

It was a longshot, but the only way to stop this project was the courts. And the courts pretty much punted (until the last case, which has been mostly ignored by the press, when they smacked down the Empire State Development Corporation regarding the environmental review for Phase 2). And the press pretty much ignored those earlier cases too, despite some significant eloquence in court.

Failure of eloquence? Maybe, but a lot of other larger failures, including democratic process, press coverage, honesty from government agencies, and developer candor.

Norman Oder
Atlantic Yards Report

http://twitter.com/AYReport Norman Oder

I’d add, contra Ms. Lange’s generally thoughtful critique in her book, that Curbed and Brownstoner in no way function as analogues to the Village Voice of Jacobs’ era. The differences–depth, commercial pressures, original reporting–are huge. Maybe the Brooklyn Rail of 2004-05, which published some tough and eloquent reportage by Brian Carreira, might qualify. But too few people read his work.

http://twitter.com/degoldstein Daniel E. Goldstein

While I appreciate Ms. Lange’s writing over the years and look forward to reading the book, I do take issue with the comment she makes above in response to the PPS question. Admittedly my response is coming from a rather personal perspective as I was the prominent, public activist voice of the Atlantic Yards opposition, but I don’t believe that compromises its accuracy.

First, in my view Jane Jacobs is an original, and the best known urban development activist perhaps in world history, and can’t be duplicated. Having said that, the “eloquence” of the Atlantic Yards opposition and its critique and analyses of cost and alternatives were powerful over the 7 year long fight against Atlantic Yards–heck, we actually found a legitimate developer to propose the community’s plan (a modification of what would later be called the UNITY Plan) and outbid Ratner to gain control of the MTA/LIRR rail yards without needlessly using eminent domain, while building with a density appropriate for the location. I would argue that that episode, if not unique in urban development fights, was very rare and dependent on the smarts, arguments and eloquence of the advocates. Neither Jane’s articulate advocacy nor ours would have changed the fact that the bidding process for the Vanderbilt Yards was a sham process and that the MTA Board would make its decision solely based on whatever Bloomberg and Pataki told them to do. Thus they awarded the rail yards to the lower bidder with the less feasible plan.

Nothing spoke more eloquently about the dirty nature of the Atlantic Yards deal than that part of the saga; nothing so starkly illustrated the fixed nature of the deal and the fundamental corruption that allowed it to go forward.

The differences between this era, and this fight, and Jacobs’ are too many to enumerate, and differences in the media climate are vast, as Ms. Lange argues. While Robert Moses was extremely formidable, Ms. Jacobs didn’t have to deal with the kind of intense, private developer PR and backroom lobbying that we did (it’s fool’s errand to gauge which was more formidable, the point is the nature of each had their unique challenges.) Add the fact that Mayor Bloomberg has been, perhaps, the most powerful powerbroker the city has seen, and we were up against a more formidable opponent with a much more compromised—also prostrate and stenographic—press, cowed by the power of the Ratners and Bloombergs.

We could have been wordsmiths greater than Shakespeare (or Jacobs) and that wouldn’t have changed the outcome. Alas, discussions about PILOTS, the takings clause, ULURP, SEQRA, FAR, mitigation, jobs per subsidy dollar, AMI, etc will always be informative and can be eloquent, but they will never be as “seductive” (to some) as a curvaceous Gehry rendering with beguiling names such as Miss Brooklyn. (Btw, the architectural critique of the project, while relevant, was not the one that would win the day). But so what? Do the press and public really always need to be seduced by the shiniest bauble?

The real fight was in the streets, in the press and in the courts. I’d argue we won the street fight and the press fights. Is there a person out there who has paid even the slightest attention who doesn’t realize that AY was hugely controversial, and is there anyone who honestly thinks that the outcome has been or will be a success (besides those who can’t see past the understandable excitement of pro sports in Brooklyn?). We also laid the legal and public relations groundwork to win in court. I will go to my grave knowing that we were right on the merits in our eminent domain case, but faced courts lacking in courage and thoroughness. I’d recommend reading some of the legal briefs if you’re looking for eloquence.

Had established civic, good government and architectural institutions (I’m looking at you MAS, RPA, Citizens Union) paid morerecognition and respect to the leaders of the AY opposition, our megaphone would surely have become even louder. But the power politics apparently were too hairy, and Ratner philanthropy and reach to octopus-like.

Ms. Lange, understandably, may have missed the scores events—public meetings, rallies, street tabling, leafleting, political club meetings, community board meetings, walkathons, public hearings, oversight hearings, etc.—and white papers, economic analyses, primers and alternative analyses that the eloquent opposition participated in writing and disseminating. While there was plenty of fodder for the mostly vapid, pie-throwing blogs, the substance of the fight happened off of the internet (the exceptions being the invaluable and heroic Atlantic Yards Report by Norman Oder and No Land Grab).

Is there good activist criticism of design and architecture? I think there is. And eloquent critiques by anti-Atlantic Yards advocates are not hard to come by.

But NYC’s mainstream press isn’t ready to make a Jacobsian celebrity and hero out of principled activist leaders fighting faulty and corrupt development plans. Quite to the contrary they seem to be giddily eager to vilify them.

Believe me, our biggest struggles in the uphill effort to stop Atlantic Yards and advocate for a project that made financial and planning sense was not due to any lack of eloquence.

http://twitter.com/AYReport Norman Oder

Re Daniel Goldstein’s comments. If the Atlantic Yards opposition won the press fights, it was only on a pass-fail basis, in that most people know there’s something fishy about the project.

A real win, as he indicates later in his comments, would have been if the mainstream press had been willing to dig. Or even be honest.

Consider what was probably the biggest coup by Goldstein and Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn, an episode that occurred in September-October 2005, just as I started my predecessor blog.

Here’s how I tell the story:

The main Atlantic Yards opposition group, Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn, had scored a coup. They’d discovered an Internal Revenue Service filing by BUILD (Brooklyn United for Innovative Local Development), a job training group that was a huge Atlantic Yards cheerleader.

BUILD was set up to negotiate a Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) with Forest City to guarantee local hiring, job training, affordable housing, and minority contracting, among other things. However, the IRS document suggested that the fledgling BUILD was being paid $5 million to be Forest City’s front.

Develop Don’t Destroy fed the document to Daily News columnist Gonzalez. In his Sept. 29, 2005 column, Snake in the grassroots, Gonzalez contrasted the findings with BUILD’s claims of independence; representatives of both BUILD and Forest City insisted the group was not being paid. Later that day, at a contentious press conference captured in the Atlantic Yards documentary film Battle for Brooklyn, BUILD representatives said the filing was a mistake. A viewer might be left confused.

Several news outlets quickly covered the contretemps, but not the Times. More than two weeks later, the BUILD episode had been tucked into a front-page thumbsucker that lauded Forest City Ratner for its strategies. The headline, To Build Arena in Brooklyn, Developer First Builds Bridges, pointed to the conclusion:
But from whatever viewpoint, the project’s seemingly inexorable movement suggests that Mr. Ratner is creating a new and finely detailed modern blueprint for how to nourish – and then harvest – public and community backing for a hugely ambitious development… in the middle of a populous, cantankerous and often sharply divided city.

It was a remarkable swing from “snake in the grassroots” to “modern blueprint.” (Also, it was silly to term a city “populous.”) But the “modern blueprint” was incompatible with a scoop downplayed in the Times’s coverage: BUILD and Forest City had been caught lying.

Both parties had told Gonzalez that Forest City wasn’t paying BUILD, and BUILD officials spoke similarly to reporter Nicholas Confessore. In mid-October, however, Forest City’s flack, Joe DePlasco, and a new spokeswoman for BUILD “revised that account,” in the Times’s delicate parlance. Forest City had given $100,000 to the group in August and provided free office space.

It wasn’t $5 million, but it should have demolished the article’s thesis. Instead, DePlasco–whom I later called a “dark genius” for his manipulative skills–got the last word, piously claiming that support for nonprofits was “at the foundation” of Forest City’s work.The “modern blueprint” has been further demolished… again and again:–the failure to hire an Independent Compliance Monitor–the evasions about same–the lawsuit filed against BUILD–even Mayor Bloomberg’s belated denunciations of CBA.Too few bother to follow up.

http://twitter.com/degoldstein Daniel E. Goldstein

I meant to add that I hope Ms. Lange has seen the Oscar shortlisted documentary about the fight Battle for Brooklyn. If not, I urge you to see it. There is a screening schedule at http://www.battlleforbrooklyn.com